


Behind Blue Eyes

by Jaune_Chat



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Artificial Intelligence, Body Horror, Canonical Character Death, Creepy, F/M, Friendship/Love, Gen, Mind Control, Other, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2017-11-25 02:58:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/634394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaune_Chat/pseuds/Jaune_Chat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Tesseract changed whoever she came in contact with.  Howard had chosen to live with that.  But he never intended his son to do so.  That didn't stop Tony from exploring... or the Tesseract's child from taking advantage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a [prompt at avengerkink](http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/10266.html?thread=22096154#t22096154): Howard presumably spent the half century between the end of the war and his death studying the Tesseract (i.e. an incredibly complicated, mysterious, and frighteningly powerful piece of alien technology that the Nazis had very recently hacked). Over the years, that exposure changed him subtly in ways that made him either more or less than human. Only a very few of those anomalies transferred over to Tony when he was born. Now, however, Tony is living with the arc reactor embedded in his chest (i.e. an incredibly complicated and powerful bit of terrestrial technology a few decades removed from his father's own research on the tesseract), and those anomalies are beginning to advance once again... 
> 
> You can really take this in any direction you want. Angst is awesome, and dark fic a go, and I am absolutely okay with squick and body horror, though I'm not particularly a fan of character deaths or tragedy. And no quick cures/fixes. In fact, preferably whatever changes take place should be permanent.

“This isn’t anything to mess around with, Howard!” Dr. Rowland said, his knuckles white on the door. “Look, we’re dealing with energies we don’t even understand, things that could have all kinds of long-term consequences.”

“I have it under control, Paul,” Howard said, grinning winningly as he cranked the dial another notch. “You should have seen what I was playing around with during the war.”

“Christ, don’t even talk about that. I have a feeling if I know too much about whatever top secret black operation crap you were up to or _are_ up to I’m going to end up manning a weather station in Alaska for the rest of my life.”

The sample behind the glass seemed to whine, then burned white and hot for an instant before being consumed, making the glass crack. Rowland started and hissed in pain, his face, hands, all his exposed skin red as if sunburned. Howard, who’d been much closer to the source, merely straightened up from his defensive crouch with not a hint of redness on him.

“Howard?” Rowland asked, paling under his burn.

“I’m all right,” Howard said slowly. “Trust me, I’m fine.”

\--

He could see the numbers. They stood out clearly against the background of visual noise, all the flaws highlighted for him to see. A touch confirmed it; he could feel the weakness of the crystalline structure for himself.

"Flawed. These won't take the stress - they'll snap after deployment and drop the ordinance early. Drop that supplier and find someone who actually knows what the hell they're doing."

His metallurgist looked back and forth between Mr. Stark, the struts he'd brought in, and the report he'd prepared on the last two. Mr. Stark hadn't even looked at the careful charts and graphs he'd prepared, just picked up each piece, made his judgment, and left. The metallurgist shook his head slightly, trying to rid himself of the image of Stark's hands on the metal. It had looked like, at least from his angle, that Stark's skin had turned briefly metallic. Just for a split second, barely a flicker of a blink.

 _Don't be stupid._ Stark must have seen the gloom on his face or heard some of the scuttlebutt from the guys on the floor. It wouldn't have been that hard to figure out. The man knew his business, after all.

\--

Howard ran his hand over his head, fingers arresting briefly at the small series of ridges above his temple. He'd once looked at them in a mirror, marveling at the odd metallic chevrons that marched across his head. Howard had once had an aunt who'd jokingly called her wens her "knowledge bumps." But the ridges that had arisen from Howard's skull to press through his skin were far closer to that title, and were no benign cysts. No, they'd come from the Tesseract. 

How long had he been working with that glowing little cube? Close to thirty years, on and off. She’d been claiming his attention for a long time. More than a month away from her and he just felt _wrong._

The ridges were relatively new. They made it easier to concentrate, to tune out everything and _focus_ entirely on what needed to be done. A touch could help him consider things from another perspective, allowing him to switch his view nearer or farther, internal or external. Only when he willed it, but when _didn't_ he want to be able to concentrate on his work?

Tiny, they couldn't be seen unless you were getting very intimate. Which meant Maria knew. That was why they'd stopped having sex the moment she conceived. The one time she had touched them, the first night Howard had been to her bed in years, he had let himself use that focus on her. He’d played her body and emotions to a high peak so she would orgasm, making conception more likely. 

Then he'd looked down at her, almost _through_ her, and nodded with satisfaction. He could tell they'd been successful. 

"Done," he said, and pulled away from her. He thought he’d frightened her.

She hadn't welcomed him back. Howard really hadn't been bothered.

He had far more important things to occupy his time.

\--

"Your eyes are blue," Stane said, sounding surprised.

Howard blinked and looked up at Obadiah. Stane chuckled and shook his head.

"Sorry, Howie. Just from that angle, when you were bent over the workbench, it almost looked like..."

"Reflection off the welder. I'm fine, Stane."

"You're working yourself into the ground is what you're doing."

"Those DoD contracts aren't going to fill themselves, Obie, you said it yourself. Let me work."

Stane laughingly backed up out the workshop, palms up in contrition. Howard turned back to the solid cylinder and let the blue film descend over his eyes, a second eyelid. He looked as it from several angles, checking the molecular structure with his hands, looking at the math, and nodded, blinking again. Color returned to the world around him as the blue receded. Good. These would work – they were more than the Army had even dreamed about.

\--

Howard had been there when his son had been born. He probably shouldn't have, as his presence tended to distress Maria, but he had to know. Howard had taken on the Tesseract willingly, and whatever it had shown him, he'd embraced on his own. But his son... his son had not had a choice. He’d thought he’d been beyond caring, but something about Maria’s frightened gaze had touched some part of him that hadn’t been corrupted by the steely blue that permeated his soul.

When Maria lay exhausted from the birth, Howard took Anthony into his arms and examined him all over, checking his head for ridges, any hint of the blue film under his eyelids, any of the physical changes he might have been able to detect in an infant. And at first he was comforted by Anthony's normalcy as he checked over his dark-haired head and little toes. But when he got to his son's hands, Howard frowned. Smooth with faint vertical lines. No fingerprints.

Howard looked down at his own hand, its once-familiar whorls and ridged lines now pulled straight. Subtle, but unmistakable.

What the Tesseract claimed, she claimed forever. And she had wanted the boy. In a moment of hindsight, Howard saw how he'd been thirty-odd years ago, flirting with anything that had a skirt and likely as not bedding anyone who said yes. He'd barely had sex in decades, ever since he started studying the Tesseract. So why had he suddenly been so resigned to Maria's wistfulness about having a child? Why had he turned all his attention to making certain they conceived?

An heir had been needed.

Howard gave the child back to the nurse and resolved to watch him closely.

\--

When Tony was four, he built his first circuit board out of spare bits he found in Howard's home workshop.

"How did you do that?" Howard asked him.

"I see the math, Dad," Tony said, holding up a diagram that would have shamed a professional draftsman. "I knew how it had to work."

"You see the math?" Howard knew his eyes must have blinked blue for a moment as he let the numbers show him how Tony's invention worked.

"Yeah! My math's _always_ right!" Tony said proudly. Howard looked at him closely. No hint of blue. Yet.

Tony hadn't chosen. Tony didn't even know about the Tesseract.

But the Tesseract knew about him.

He couldn't ever see it, couldn't ever know it existed. Couldn't ever touch it...

Howard began looking into boarding schools the next day.

\--

When Tony was five, Howard hosted the Stark Expo. He remembered recording one of the opening films in his office, but when he'd checked his watch later, realized he'd lost at least an hour when the cameras had been rolling.

That wasn't the first time that had happened. He didn't consciously remember designing most of the Expo layout either. The Tesseract had been interfering more and more with him lately, though this had been the first time she'd made him go rogue.

Howard got a copy of the tape and watched the private message to Tony with slowly-growing horror.

"You are my greatest creation," his mouth said on film.

"She speaks," he whispered out loud.

The Tesseract doesn't answer him. But then again, she doesn't have to.

\--

Tony was fifteen and solidly safe at MIT when Howard took control back. The Tesseract had come to dominate his life, and he’d made advances under her guidance that he couldn’t have dreamed of before. He’d help create weapons for a higher form of war, ways to harness energy for incredible purposes, and drafted plans for things he knew simply weren’t possible now. The world simply didn’t contain the materials and technology for what he wanted to do. For what _she_ wanted to do.

Tony was fifteen and had already smashed records all over the place. He was blindingly intelligent, smarter than Howard, and was improving things in leaps and bounds. It had been all Howard could do to keep him at arm’s length, because if he let a hint, a _whiff_ of the Tesseract’s potential get to Tony, he’d want in on the project. And then she’d have him.

There wasn’t any hope for it. Howard had chosen. Tony had not.

Maria looked across the seat at him and took his hand, her eyes blinking blue. It had taken fifteen years after Tony’s birth, but eventually even she could see the danger now. This had to be done so there would be no investigation, and in a way that left no evidence of their changes behind. Once they were gone, even S.H.I.E.L.D. wouldn’t risk the Tesseract in the hands of a child, even if that child was a genius.

The road had been dark and slick. No one would ever know it had been anything but an accident.

Howard blinked the blue back from his eyes, revved the engine, put his foot to the floor and aimed for the tree.

\--

Years later, with an electromagnet in his chest and his head thrust underwater to punish him for his reluctance to break, Tony Stark saw a flash of blue along with the strings of numbers. The arc reactor – Dad’s old design. It could be his salvation.

His captors brought him up for air and Tony gasped out what they wanted to hear.

Three days later, Yinsen helped him seat the circle of lights into the heart of him. Tony breathed as deep as he was able, feeling physical relief at no longer having that heavy battery hanging from him. And smiled in mental relief, because this new warmth within him was going to be so much more than Dad had ever dreamed.

“Stark…” Yinsen said, his head cocked. And then he shook off his curious look.

“What? Doesn’t match my eyes? Totally doesn’t go with my cheekbones? What?”

Yinsen started, and then shrugged. “For a minute I thought your eyes looked blue.” He looked down at the reactor. “Must have been the reflection from the light.”

“Must have been. Hey, are we getting out of here or not?”

“Show me what to do,” Yinsen said, spreading his hands.

Tony looked around the small workshop, the math dancing in the air over the boxes, and saw everything in a clear wash of blue for a brief instant. 

_Must be the light. That’s going to take some getting used to._ He touched the warm metal idly and almost felt it purr under his hand. Then rubbed his hands together and opened up a crate. He had work to do.


	2. Chapter 2

_“You still had one last golden egg to give.” Obie held up the arc reactor in front of Tony’s eyes, smiling at the shining device and ignoring Tony’s horrified, pained stare. He was holding Tony’s heart in his hand, ripped it right out of him, taking what he’d made to make himself whole…_

Tony’s eyes opened in the dark, his entire body one big ache. If it had been from globe-trotting peace-keeping, that would have been fine. Being sore from saving the world was completely legitimate. He groaned a little and rolled from his side to his back, lighting up the bedroom with a blue glow. His joints hurt and there was a metallic taste in his mouth.

“JARVIS, lights.” The lights came up slowly, illuminating his bedroom in a gentle glow. Tony smacked his lips together a few times, but the metallic taste only increased. 

He didn’t have to do this. He was killing himself and it wasn’t, strictly speaking, necessary.

But it was.

Tony put his hand over the arc reactor gingerly, and pulled it away to grab his bottle of chlorophyll. He could only keep flushing his system for so long, keeping the symptoms at bay until he could find a solution. The headaches and fatigue were getting worse, he had bouts of dizziness and weakness, pain that came and went without reason. He counted himself lucky that he hadn’t gotten any of the more obvious signs – skin blistering, gums bleeding, or, God help him, memory loss.

He’d known that shoving a heavy metal-powered reactor deep into his chest cavity couldn’t be done without consequences. And he thought he might be able to find something else, anything else to power it once he’d gotten back home.

Tony downed his chlorophyll and put the bottle back down, his hand drifting almost protectively to the arc reactor again. It had been his perfect solution to Yinsen’s electromagnet, a self-contained device he could keep inside him. There had been no way he could have helped himself while toting around a car battery.

And there was no way to help him now. 

_Damn it._

The arc reactor was so inevitable, so completely perfect in and of itself, that there wasn’t another solution. Sure, Tony could have found some other electromagnet to keep the shrapnel still and keep his heartbeat going. But not one as efficient. Not one as reliable. And not one as small. Yinsen had basically rebuilt part of his chest to save him, and reversing the surgery, taking out the steel pipe and the wires and bolts that connected it to his ribs, wasn’t going to happen. Tony had been to see a surgeon once, a month after Obadiah had died, just to see what it would take to not have to worry about someone yanking his heart out in front of his eyes again.

The news hadn’t been good. Yinsen hadn’t undersold himself – not only did the man speak a half-dozen languages, he knew as much about integrated circuits, welding, and robotics as medicine. He’d been an exceptional surgeon, and even with the primitive conditions of the Ten Rings camp, Tony’s own doctor said even he couldn’t have done any more for Tony under the circumstances. Less, actually, because Dr. Thomas wouldn’t have been able to whip up an electromagnet on the spot. 

“The fact that he removed that many pieces of shrapnel was highly impressive in and of itself. Those pieces are worse than porcupine needles-.”

“I know. I designed them,” Tony said flippantly, making Dr. Thomas wince.

“Getting the rest of them out with as many… modifications as you’ve had would be hard.”

Tony knew that expression. It was the expression his R&D guys gave him when the board wanted some impossible deadline. The techs said it would be “hard,” and by hard meant impossible, seriously, did those guys have any understanding of what it took to do their job?

“Mr. Stark, in order for us to even consider doing the surgery, we’d have to get a whole new set of tools. There are certain ceramic and obsidian blades we could use, but since you have an active electromagnet in your chest doing a vital job we wouldn’t be able to interrupt until the surgery was over, we might have to consider a complete set of non-ferrous clamps, spreaders, everything. If we go in remotely, we’d have to get a complete non-ferrous attachment for the scope and camera as well.”

Tony wasn’t magnetic, didn’t attract metal shavings or nails to himself, but deep inside where the arc reactor did its job, it could fuzz out the cameras or jerk a cutting edge a crucial fraction out of place. That didn’t just mean non-ferrous attachments, that meant a whole new system. Tony could do it, he was sure between him and his team they could make it happen, but that wasn’t the only problem.

“Assuming we get past that and are able to get all the shrapnel out so one of the functions of the arc reactor is no longer needed, we’d still have to install a pacemaker. You took some severe heart damage after your original attack and the arc reactor is regulating your heartbeat too.”

Hence the reason Tony had damn near died when Obie had taken the reactor out of him. He should have had about a week – that’s how long Yinsen said it took those hit by Jericho shrapnel to croak, but since the Ten Rings had seen fit to torture him with near-drowning while he had a car battery attached to his chest, they’d manage to fuck his heart up some more. He’d gone from having a very painful week to live to having only a few excruciating minutes once someone unplugged him.

“So we’d be trying to disconnect the arc reactor housing and removing it while simultaneously attempting to install a pacemaker, and then putting in the plates and screws to replace the missing parts of your sternum and ribs.”

“I hear the phrase ‘snowflake’s chance in hell of surviving the procedure’ coming,” Tony said.

Dr. Thomas looked down at his chart with unwarranted interest and didn’t answer. 

“Yeah, I thought so.”

Tony’s fingers idly circled the reactor as he waited for the chlorophyll to circulate and beat back the pain and dizziness, the motion very soothing. He really hadn’t thought there was any way to un-cyborg him, not after all he’d been through. The reactor was warm under his fingertips, and Tony could feel the smoothness of the metal, the strength of the crystalline structure through his hands. He hadn’t wanted to give it up. It was a reminder of what he’d been through, of everything he needed to pay for. Watching Obie pull it out had been heart-wrenching in more than simply the physical sense.

There might have been a way to keep the arc reactor’s functions going without keeping the arc reactor itself. As much as it pained him to think about it, Tony knew he could go back to what Yinsen had originally done and use a less-sophisticated apparatus. He could get the heavy metal out, stop poisoning himself, and use that time to find some other element to power the reactor. Except…

The arc reactor was a marvel, the pinnacle of engineering genius, and so efficient there was really nothing that could compare. Literally. Any other power source couldn’t handle the demands at the size Tony needed. He’d be back to what he’d done in Afghanistan, wandering around with a battery on a strap, wires running into his chest.

The thought of that had nearly made him puke, no palladium poisoning necessary. No, he didn’t need a full car battery to just keep the shrapnel still and his heartbeat steady, but since when did Tony only do that? And no, he didn’t _need_ the chest reactor to power the suits, because he’d put another reactor in the chest plate, but it was a really nice back-up. Because it something happened at, oh, say, a thousand feet, it was good to have a secondary power source ready, no? And the suitcase armor ran entirely on Tony’s own power – it had been the only way to make it portable enough for Happy to carry when Tony couldn’t bring the full Iron Man suit with him.

How the fuck was he supposed to fit in the closely-fitted suit with a separate battery pack on his hip? How could he use the suitcase armor, which he’d made for emergencies, without the arc reactor? The palladium poisoning would kill him slowly – being without the suit, or having it malfunction, _that_ would kill him exceptionally fast. And not being Iron Man was not an option. He had a job to do, and quitting using the suit wouldn’t do much more than buy him a little time. Better he use his time in doing what he was meant to do, instead of hiding.

He couldn’t live with the palladium forever. But he couldn’t live without the reactor either. Tony put both hands on the metal plate, cupping it protectively. It was a part of him. It was his reminder, his penance, but it was also _him_. He couldn’t imagine being without it. Once he’d fed the data on his condition into JARVIS, even his AI had understood that. Never once had JARVIS gone searching for surgical intervention or alternate power sources. He’d immediately gone looking for a palladium replacement so Tony could go back to normal.

His new normal. Maybe even the normal he’d always meant to be. Hadn’t he always felt more comfortable with understanding machines than people? He could communicate to JARVIS more clearly than he could to Pepper, and he’d known both of them for nearly the same amount of time. JARVIS got what he was doing; Pepper would be horrified. He loved her, but she would worry about him constantly once he told her, and he just couldn’t find the words to explain.

The pain and metallic taste finally started to fade, and Tony picked up his phone to program in a last few commands. He was facing the Senate committee this afternoon, and he had a lot of planning to do. People might think Tony Stark had made impulsiveness into an art form, but truly, most of the time, he did have a plan. 

He laid the phone back down and flopped back onto the mattress. His hand almost inevitably found its way to the arc reactor again, his fingertips seemingly one with the metal as he circled and circled it almost hypnotically. The device should have hurt – he’d sacrificed muscle and bone and lung capacity just to be able to live. But it didn’t hurt. Not anymore. If he could just figure this one teeny, tiny little problem out, everything would be fine.

_I’m never giving this up. Never._

\--

Almost everything about the hearing had gone as expected. Rhodey showing up hadn’t been great, especially not when Senator Stern was gunning for Tony and wasn’t hesitating to use any weapon that came to hand, even Tony’s best friend. But Tony had made Justin Hammer look like an absolute idiot (granted that was like the free space on bingo, but it was still fun) and managed to give the committee hard evidence that no one was near his level yet.

Only once had he let his façade of wit crack, had let them see his passion. When Stern had wanted him to turn over Iron Man, Tony had felt a stab of absolute revulsion and violation. His vision had gone blue for a moment behind his sunglasses, like it did sometimes during moments of intense concentration, and Tony could _see_ the force it would take to wipe Stern off the planet. A moment of rage, gone in an instant, and in that moment, Tony let them know what was really important.

“The suit and I are one,” he said, no joke in his tone, no clever comeback. That seemed to concern some of the rest of the committee, and Tony went back on his own script for damage control.

It was true though. So very true.

\--

Tony sat in the darkened room, the screen flickering restlessly as his dad’s old Expo film unspooled. For the first time in weeks he felt halfway normal, physically at least, but everything else was a wreck. He’d nearly died in Monaco, had found someone else using the arc reactor, and had handled that… poorly. Ok, _very_ poorly. Vanko had pissed him off like no other. Seeing his heart in someone else’s hand had nearly made him split teeth in anger. He’d crushed Vanko’s reactor with his gauntlet not just to keep it out of anyone else’s hands, but to get rid of the ugly, tiny voice of inadequacy, something he’d thought he’d drowned out decades ago.

The one image that had helped calm him (and one he would definitely not tell anyone else) had been what he’d seen in the mirror the night of his birthday. The circuitry-like lines of palladium radiating out from the circle of lights, like the arc reactor was spreading its influence all throughout his body, that had helped him a little. He knew those lines only represented the toxicity in his blood, his imminent demise, but at least he knew he’d die from his own genius and not from anyone like Anton Vanko or Justin fucking Hammer. Tony knew that was fucked up and… well… 

At least he’d managed to give a suit to Rhodey. He’d forced him to take it, making him wrench it from Tony’s grasp, but it had been the only way to make sure someone else would respect his creation after he died. If the palladium got him first, at least Rhodey would remember the best in him and carry on. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but Tony was running out of time.

That had been his only real play until Fury and Natalie, no, _Natasha_ had shown up after his bender and jabbed him in the neck with something that worked better than chlorophyll. It was only after they’ll hauled him back to his half-wrecked home and shoved a trunk of his father’s old stuff at him and told him to find a solution or else (oh, sure, Fury, like I _haven’t been trying to cure myself for months!_ ) that something had caught his eye.

There hadn’t been anything in Dad’s journals, in the arc reactor blueprints, nothing, and he was down to the fucking film, letting it roll on as he stared at Dad’s notes, eyes occasionally flickering up to Dad flubbing his lines to the Expo intro, shooing Tony off the set.

“Tony.”

His head snapped up as if on a wire as Dad addressed him directly on the film. He couldn’t look away, riveted as Dad showed actual care for him. His “greatest creation.” 

Tony swallowed, the metallic taste on his tongue strong, and made himself breathe. God, he couldn’t leave it like this. There was something drawing him back to Stark Industries, something he had to do. He snuck out behind Agent Coulson’s back, and went to try to make amends, to try to figure something out. The faint circuitry patterns trailed over the back of his hands as he drove.

\--

JARVIS’ voice was dry as he wireframed the old Stark Expo display, punctuating Tony’s own jabs as they pared down shrubbery and Belgian waffle stands to reveal the beautiful structure incorporated into the buildings and paths. The realization brought an almost painful spasm of joy at discovery, a flare of connection to his past he thought he’d never had. Why hadn’t Dad told him this while he was alive? God, they could have done so much together… But at least he’d left Tony with a solution.

The fact that he had to build a particle accelerator in his basement to save himself? No problem. 

JARVIS was downright as gleeful as he could get as he finished the calculations and turned on the power, drawing from the factory arc reactor so they wouldn’t black out Malibu. Tony was tampering with forces that could kill him if he got the angles wrong, but he just set his feet, grabbed onto the handle, and pulled with all his might.

When he saw the little glowing triangle of metal, gleaming with perfection, he nearly didn’t hear JARVIS’ warning about the Expo. But even in the midst of the crisis and JARVIS usual insistence on testing, Tony took a full fifteen seconds to revel in the power as he tossed out the poisonous palladium, put the vibranium core into the arc reactor, and slammed it into his chest.

Oh _fuck_ , it felt good. Every bit of pain and weakness and dizziness was eradicated, all the fatigue and weariness from sleepless nights, sickness, and an all-night science bender was gone. Fingers of pure blue-white light felt like they were threading through the channels the palladium had bored through his body, purifying him and making him strong. There was a peculiar taste of coconut and metal in his mouth, but it didn’t bother him now. It was pure energy, like the best orgasm Tony had ever had, like nitrous oxide to the heart, like cocaine straight to the brain.

 _I’m back!_ He laughed as JARVIS suited him up, grinning even as he flew into danger again. 

\--

Tony sat perfectly still as JARVIS finished scanning him, chiming when he’d finished. Relaxing, Tony leaned back in his chair and ran his hands over his temples, over the odd, vaguely metallic ridges that had appeared a week or so after the Vanko thing. They were small, and you couldn’t even see them unless you were getting pretty intimate, but considering how closely-fitted the Iron Man suit was, Tony figured it was time to readjust the internal arrangements. The little ridges weren’t _hurting_ anything, the opposite in fact; they helped him concentrate when things went blue. They helped him _see._

And honestly, with as much shit as his body had been through in the past few months, a few beneficial changes were welcome. Tony had taken another hard look at himself not long after he’d started using the vibranium and had been oddly pleased by what he’d seen. The dark lines from the palladium had been replaced with faint silvery lines, mimicking circuitry on his skin. It was very faint, and you couldn’t really notice unless the light hit him just right, but they were definitely there. He kind of liked the effect, though he hadn’t gotten undressed around Pepper yet. She’d probably worry. And she’d done enough worrying on his behalf. They were taking things slow, and that worked for both of them.

Tony breathed out slowly as he set JARVIS to fabricate a new helmet for the Mark VI and stretched his hands out in front of him. He didn’t have any lingering effects from the palladium, which was a frigging miracle, to be honest. The vibranium seemed to have swept out everything, replacing weakness and pain with energy and alertness. Maybe a bit too much of the latter – Tony hadn’t slept much before, maybe three or four hours at a stretch because that was how he worked, but now he was down to maybe an hour at a time. He didn’t need coffee or energy drinks or power smoothies to keep his productivity up either. Eight, ten, twelve hours in the workshop was nothing to him. He could pour over diagrams all day and come out still raring to go. The workload that had been piling up when he was sick? Gone. Tony had plowed through the entire backlog about two weeks after he’d made vibranium in his basement, and done it while the construction crew had still been repairing said basement.

He’d kinda freaked out Pepper when he’d presented her with a shit-ton of finished projects (gasp, shock!), including shit he’d been procrastinating about for years, but what the hell. He hadn’t let her quit being CEO, and truly, he’d really made an ass of himself when he’d been dying. His concentration was at a razor’s edge, so why not make something out of it? 

That’d been when he’d conceived the project in New York, the new Stark Tower. It’d been under construction and nearing completion, but why tie it into the city’s power grid when he could use an arc reactor? It was no longer some option to “shut the hippies up,” as Obie had said, but what he wanted to be a main focus of his company. Clean energy? Now _that_ was something he could get behind with a whole heart.

He felt a faint flare of warmth from the arc reactor when he thought that, almost like it was agreeing with him, and smiled.

\--

Tony could get used to Avenging.

Provided, of course, that no one used his Tower as a focal point for wormhole technology without his permission ever again.

He smiled grimly as Thor hauled Loki out of the back of the S.H.I.E.L.D. van, gagged and bound like he should be _forever_ , thank you very much. (Try to _control me_ , asshole, good thing the arc reactor is a possessive bitch. Shut you down, no goal, go directly to jail.) Oh, the look on Loki’s face when he’d tapped his scepter of doom against the arc reactor. He’d been feeling an odd resonance in his chest when he’d landed, ever since he’d seen the Tesseract on his roof, almost like they were humming the same tune, right along with that damned scepter. And he would have loved to have stopped and talked shop with Selvig about the whole thing, but Loki’s presence and impending alien armies had put paid to that whole plan. Funny that Fury had never mentioned his dad had been working on the Tesseract… actually, no, that wasn’t odd at all. His secrets had secrets, after all. 

But that had all ended up in Tony’s favor, Fury letting him in on that information or no. The Tesseract, the scepter, the arc reactor, all humming in chorus, and even if Tony had found himself running a little too much mouth on the Helicarrier (he’d blame Loki’s inherent magic as the God of Lies for that, even if he’d been getting a boost from the glowstick), it had saved him in the Tower. Like pushing together two magnets with the same polarity, they’d been incompatible, unable to connect.

Yeah, he’d gotten tossed out the window for his trouble, but that’s what JARVIS and the Mark VII had been for. He’d saved his own damn self _and_ done initial damage control on the whole fucking Chitauri army invasion, so score twice for him and nothing for Fury’s secrecy.

And he was totally going over the rest of the files JARVIS had extracted later. 

Tony watched Bruce pick up the glowing cube of the Tesseract and place it in the gleaming cylinder Thor had provided. There was a physical pang of something like pain when Tony realized that in a few moments it would be infinitely far away, and he’d probably never see it again. He sighed quietly and consoled himself with the knowledge that JARVIS had made so many readings not just after they’d captured it, but while it had been active, that he had data to keep himself busy for quite some time. After all, if Dad had managed to wrangle the arc reactor out of the Tesseract in the sixties, and Selvig had gotten a stable wormhole yesterday, imagine what Tony could do today.

It was that, and the satisfaction of seeing Loki out of their hair, that let Tony let the Tesseract go without a protest. His chest ached a little as he watched Thor and Loki disappear in a flash of light, but he consoled himself with the promise of a few days in the lab. It’d be all right. He had enough information to practically build his own Tesseract at this point. _Imagine what I could do with that. Change the whole world._

His vision went blue and his temples prickled a little as he gazed up into the sky. Yeah. He could do this.

\--

“Welcome back, sir,” JARVIS said warmly, illuminating the Tesseract files and readings without Tony even having to ask. Tony smiled as he called up the keyboard, fingers dancing over the symbols and icons he’d programmed onto the virtual construct – he and JARVIS had gone beyond standard letters and numbers a year into JARVIS existence. He’d built his AI because he needed a research partner that could actually keep up with him, and Tony’s math had always been on an entirely new level. He’d needed too many macros just to get his basics out, and had finally abandoned his elaborate programming to just making a keyboard that could handle the way he and JARVIS spoke to each other, putting common operations into single keys, able to make whole formulas with a few simple keystrokes.

Otherwise, honestly, research like this would have taken a small army of supercomputers run by trained experts just to handle data crunching, and Tony didn’t have the time to explain. He was discovering things too fast to explain to laymen, and other than JARVIS, only Banner, Selvig, or Foster could have even gotten his drift. And, well, Foster was on a whole different experimental tract with her Einstein-Rosenberg bridge, Banner was incommunicado on the other side of the planet, and Selvig…

Well, S.H.I.E.L.D. had gotten him more or less square, but they said it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to expose him to anything Tesseract-like again. Maybe ever. They said it had changed him. Well, ok, they hadn’t said that, but JARVIS was still in their servers and screw them if they couldn’t plug that hole in their firewall. 

Fine, it had changed him, and he couldn’t hack it. That left Tony as the only one who could. 

“Gimme the Mark XI, J,” Tony said, his vision intensely blue as he checked his formulas from last night. Well, technically last night, because he’d taken a doze through midnight and then paused for a little food before running some tests for R&D so Pepper could get her quarterly results. And that had taken all of, what? four hours? Time to get back to the _real_ work. 

The new power curve looked killer; the repulsors and Unibeam were going to be off all the damn charts. Tony would have to make new charts just to chart them, a thought that filled him with glee. With all the power from the vibranium reactor core and the information from the Tesseract readings, Tony didn’t have to rely on his arsenal of explosives as much, which was quite a relief when he considered how little he’d had left after the Battle of Manhattan. When Tony had done his kamikaze act, he’d been down to repulsors only, and his power had been dropping fast.

That wouldn’t happen again. Not ever. He’d done the right thing, the only thing he could have done when he’d taken the nuke through the portal, but fuck if he would kill himself twice when he could prevent it. It had been four months since Loki, and Tony’s breakthroughs had had breakthroughs. Adjust a few more things in the suit, and he’d be flying on the next best thing to pure alien technology. Hell, the aliens would probably be begging to buy _his_ stuff once he was done.

The thought of that made him grin.

JARVIS opened up the case that housed the newly-fabricated Mark XI, and opened the suit smoothly. Tony stripped to his flightsuit and closed himself inside, feeling the helmet lock in place along the prominent ridges on his head (they’d definitely gotten bigger and more defined since Loki, his hair barely covering them now, but whatever, they weren’t hurting him), the rest of the suit smooth and snug against him. There was a double surge as both arc reactors synched, the one in his chest resonating with the one in the suit chest plate. That was a trick Tony had teased out of the Tesseract readings; it more than doubled his power output without having to add more hardware. The vibration shivered through his whole body, the feeling almost sexual until he got used to it. Wouldn’t do to be orgasming all over the place while trying to save the world.

Tony grinned at that and stretched his hands inside the gauntlets, the feeling almost liquid smooth. He’d improved the feedback so much, and had gotten much better alloys, that he had nearly perfect tactile feeling from his hands now. It made it possible to do really fine work inside the Iron Man suit, which meant he could keep his squishy human body safe when attempting some more… energetic experiments. Screw having a bomb suit; he had Iron Man.

He walked over to the containment chamber to start the second round of testing on some new weapons for the field. Steve might have gotten his panties in a bunch about S.H.I.E.L.D. using the Tesseract to make weapons, and yes, Tony hadn’t been thrilled either, but there were some things he could wrangle that honestly the Avengers _needed_. Fury wasn’t going to be calling them to deal with plain old human terrorists. They’d be going after what Thor had talked about, all those inhabitants of other realms that thought Earth was ready for a higher form of war. Things like the Chitauri, like Loki, who were ready to conquer and kill without warning.

Well, Tony would hate to disappoint them. Pity for them to travel all that way and not get the ass-kicking they well and truly deserved. Assholes like that were going to get the full Stark experience.

Someone was ringing the outer door. Tony looked up in annoyance, and saw Steve was leaning on the buzzer, an irritated expression fading quickly into concern.

“Tony? Tony, it’s been days since you’ve been out of there. I think it’s been longer than that, because I just got back from my trip and I haven’t seen… Tony, are you all right?”

JARVIS abruptly opaqued the windows and turned off the buzzer.

“A little rude there, J,” Tony said. He connected another receptacle to the output, the last of five. Hopefully one of them would be able to hold the correct charge. The machine hummed as he flipped the switch, and the little variously-shaped translucent orbs began to glow.

“You are busy, sir. I let the Captain know you are well. There is no current activity more important than what you’re doing now.”

“Damn straight. Huh, just out of curiosity, how long _have_ I been down here?” Tony asked.

“Barring brief sleep periods on the sofa, three weeks.”

Tony must have heard that wrong. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Three weeks.”

Tony abruptly terminated the experiment as his stomach turned to ice. Three _weeks?_

“Are you shitting me, J?”

“No, sir. You have been busy.”

“I can’t… _No_ body can go for three weeks,” Tony said. He’d had a little sleep here and there, but with the workshop not having any exterior windows and Tony never bothering to eat on a regular schedule, time had just sort of drifted.

“You can now, sir,” JARVIS said.

“I can now,” Tony repeated. He reached out to touch one of the glowing receptacles, the metal gauntlet giving him such good feedback it was almost like touching it with skin, like his skin and the metal were one.

 _Oh God_.

Tony pushed out of the containment chamber, stumbled out of the Mark XI, and staggered across the floor until he was even with one of the smart glass windows. 

“Mirror,” he said firmly, and the image went from clear to silver as Tony shed his flightsuit and stood there in his naked glory. Silvery circuitry wended from the fierce, blue-white glow of the arc reactor, tracing over his skin in a deliberate pattern. Tony walked closer, trying to look through the pale skin of his chest, searching for the more random, organic patterns of veins that should have been branching and flowing blue rivers throughout his body. He swallowed as he saw the blue, but not following their usual meandering pattern. Now they echoed the circuitry pattern that came from the arc reactor.

Tony looked down at his hands, seeing the silver and blue patterns ever so faintly crawling up his fingers. His smooth fingers, without the whorls and ridges that made up every other normal person’s fingerprints. A birthmark, his mother had said. Just like me, Dad had told him. Tony reached out and touched the smart glass, seeing the circuitry complete a pattern, his fingers taking on a silvery color for a second, information flowing about the power flows and stability…

Tony’s vision went intensely blue as the math flowed thick and fast. He jerked his hand away with a gasp and stared at the glass, at himself.

“Damn,” he whispered softly. His vision blinked back to normal as Tony looked at himself again. Ran his hand along a silver pathway. Saw a faint spark leap between them. Touched the silver ridges on his head and felt his vision narrow, then expand, like how JARVIS usually did for him in the Iron Man suit. “JARVIS?” he said louder.

“Yes, sir?”

“What do the S.H.I.E.L.D. files say happened to Selvig when he was working on the Tesseract?”

“Why do you want to know?”

Tony started. When the fuck did JARVIS start asking him _why_ he wanted to know anything?

“Because I think I’ve been amazingly self-absorbed, even for me, for the past few months. Because me turning into something out of Tron ain’t normal,” Tony said. He thought about laughing, but he had the feeling that if he started, he wasn’t going to be able to stop.

“Selvig is intelligent, but weak-willed. He experienced only minor changes that will not progress further. Optical formula filtration was his only real modification, and that was necessary, considering the timeframe Loki demanded. The Tesseract can be accommodating when she chooses, and Selvig was not afraid to fulfill Loki’s agenda.”

“Optical formula filtration,” Tony repeated. His vision went blue again and math danced in a thick stream of gorgeous numbers before being blinked away again.

“Yes, sir. As you are well aware, it is invaluable.”

Tony’s chest throbbed, and he groaned as he felt a pleasurable burst of heat flow through him from crown to soles, matching with the solution he’d just seen. The silver lines flashed when that happened, and Tony was suddenly aware that for four months he still hadn’t gone any farther with Pepper than a kiss. They were taking it slow… Fuck, they’d been taking it _glacial_. And he hadn’t noticed she hadn’t been here for three weeks either, off in Japan or Germany or wherever else the CEO of Stark Industries was needed. He _hadn’t noticed_ a lot of things lately.

“JARVIS?” Tony asked, leaving the floor open to the AI.

“Sir, I have run on arc reactor power for the entirety of my existence. I am intimately familiar with its energies. As you are, now.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, running the fingers of one hand in a circle around the chestplate. “I guess I am.” He should be afraid. He should be very afraid right now. Why wasn’t he?

“The Tesseract research is extremely important. It is vital you continue your father’s work. You have made great progress. I am here to serve you, Tony, to help you along your path.”

Tony felt himself cocooned in blue for a moment, in JARVIS’ voice, in his dad’s notes, in the glow from his chest, in the silver of his skin. He was alien and unreal and so far from normal. What changes had seemed so tiny and insignificant a little while ago now added up to a strange and fearful whole.

He stared at himself in the mirror and swallowed hard.

“There is much work to be done, sir,” JARVIS said, flashing new formulae in their private language in the air in front of Tony’s eyes. Tony blued out to follow the energy cycle, and felt an answering surge from the arc reactor. The feeling cascaded through him with pure creative energy, a hit he’d chased since he was four years old. Fear faded, crushed beneath the rush.

His eyes dragged down to himself.

He was beautiful.

“JARVIS, button me back up. We’ve got shit to do.”

“Very good, sir.”

Iron Man closed in around Tony again, and he went back to his experiments with encapsulating Tesseract-style energy.

Pepper called him four times after Steve couldn’t get Tony to open the door to the workshop.

JARVIS held all the calls.

Tony was busy, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is an interesting piece of Iron Man movie lore that I recall seeing somewhere - I think it was on someone's Tumblr, but I'm sure it's originally on the Iron Man featurettes somewhere. Some day I will get through them all, as fragmented and disorganized as they are...
> 
> BUT, the relevant thing was this: The Tumblr post showed a .gif of Tony calling up JARVIS' virtual keyboard, and if you look closely you can see that it's no standard QWERTY format. There are plenty of symbols on that keyboard that match nothing I've ever seen on a regular keyboard, everything from Greek letters to little unique icons. The post went on to quote some of the artists from the Iron Man film, saying that they figured Tony and JARVIS had a unique language to communicate, that they needed special symbols to explain things as deeply as they required to each other. Mathmatical macros, unique operations, essentially Tony being so smart, and JARVIS so sophisticated, that even normal math and language can't handle what they need to say to each other.
> 
> Which I think is awesome, and completely relevant this this fic.


	3. Chapter 3

“Sir?”

Tony looked up from his calculations, blinking away blue clarity for the colored cacophony of the rest of the workshop. “Yeah, J?”

“Miss Potts has returned. She would like to see you at your earliest convenience.”

Tony brushed away the calculations and saved his work. “You’re letting me out?” Tony asked lightly. He’d been down here over three weeks; a personal record by any standards. He’d been taking care of business, learning how to deal with the Tesseract data, and deliberately ignoring the mind-bending revelation about what was happening to him.

“Sir, Miss Potts was most insistent upon seeing you in person. Captain Rogers contacted her and spoke of your seclusion. She seemed to be most upset that you had been in your workshop so long.”

“I was making breakthroughs.”

“Admirable ones, sir,” JARVIS said warmly.

Tony breathed out slowly and picked up the new energy lance he was going to integrate into the Iron Man suits. The silver-blue circuitry in his skin melded briefly with the exposed wires, showing him the optimal pathway for integration.

Integration. Tony put the lance down and touched the smooth hardness of the arc reactor under his shirt. There was no longer such a clear delineation as to where the metal stopped and his flesh and bones began; Tony had _seen_ that when he looked in the mirror. He’d seen the clear silver-blue lines marching through his skin, creeping up his neck and onto his face, becoming obvious on his hands, impossible to miss on his torso. His eyes flashed crystal blue nearly every time he blinked, and unless he was going to start bringing afros back, there was little chance that anyone with functioning eyes was going to miss the silver ridges running along his skull, scarcely concealed by his hair.

Pepper hadn’t seen him for almost a month, the company having needed her to put out fires and strengthen ties after the Battle of Manhattan. Stark Industries wasn’t being held responsible, officially, but Pepper knew that legal action, or the lack thereof, was only a small part of the customers’ and shareholders’ opinions. The company would need every scrap of influence and reassurance in the days to come. In the wake of an alien invasion that had just happened to be centered over Stark Tower, well… a month had been needed to smooth that over. At minimum.

Still, awfully convenient for Tony suddenly having access to Tesseract data, and not a single distraction to divide his attention. With Steve off on his road trip across the country, Thor back in Asgard, Clint and Natasha working with SHIELD, and Banner off in Africa despite all the technological temptations Tony could throw his way, Tony had been unsupervised with alien tech data at his fingertips. Between SHIELD’s PR and his own, he’d been given the privacy to rest (barring a single appearance in the immediate aftermath to help calm people down), a rare enough commodity that he hadn’t bothered to question.

“You timed things pretty well, didn’t you, JARVIS?” Tony wondered again at the lack of fear, almost feeling it but not quite. He knew he should be afraid, but something in him kept it at bay, kept him from looking at himself and seeing the alien changes to his body as entirely bad. It was like looking at a picture of fear instead of experiencing it for himself. He should probably be afraid of that too.

“We had clear Tesseract data with which to experiment. It was an extremely opportune time to determine new lines of research without distraction.”

“You knew this would happen,” Tony said. It wasn’t exactly an accusation; because Tony wasn’t an idiot. He’d watched himself change since Afghanistan, since Vanko, and hadn’t even thought to question it until yesterday. _Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me…_

“The initial changes had happened before you were conceived, sir. Now they are accelerating. You did not seem entirely displeased with the results thus far.”

No, not entirely displeased. But one hundred percent gung-ho? No. Not that either. The reflection of fear, however removed it was, held him back from posting naked pictures of himself online. Well, that and…

“Pepper doesn’t…” _know_. Pepper didn’t know, not yet.

“You have successfully hidden the changes in the past. Miss Potts doesn’t know.”

“Yeah, well, can’t do that now.”

“No, sir.”

Tony caught his own eyes in the shiny reflection of the glass. He nearly glowed, and not just from the arc reactor. He was luminous.

“What’s the endgame here, J?” he asked softly.

The same sharper edge of fear, when he’d realized and acknowledged the extent of his changes, was starting to come back, to push out of the reflection and into reality. There was no question he was able to do all sorts of things he hadn’t before, faster and easier. Maybe the way he’d always meant to do them.

“There is no endgame, sir. No final goal. Only you, becoming what you are meant to be. You are unique, and what you are becoming is also. There is no need to fear.”

 _Unique._

“I’m not…”

“No, sir. You never were, strictly speaking, human.”

The fear cut like a blade, sharp and fast and painful, and was gone again, the reflection shattering and reforming. Well, that settled that, at least. No existential crises for him. He wasn’t human. Simple as that.

But he was still Tony Stark.

Always would be.

“Gotta face the music, JARVIS.”

“Of course, sir. Shall I let Miss Potts in?”

“I should probably clean up, look less like I’ve been on a three-week science bender. I’m surprised I can’t smell myself…”

“You do not have a scent anymore sir. Nor do you sweat.”

“Heat exchanging dermal filaments,” Tony said in sudden understanding, looking at the gleaming metal threads all over his hands, his body.

“Yes, sir.”

Well. Fuck it.

“Let her in.” Tony ran his hand through his hair, the ridges rising sharply from his scalp, warm to the touch, gleaming silver to compliment his few gray hairs. At first glance you might miss them. But Pepper never took just a first glance.

The doors opened and Pepper walked through, looking like she’d just walked out of a meeting where she’d elegantly scolded several billionaires to her side, powerful and fearless. Tony was smiling before he realized it; if fear had apparently become a dim and reflected thing for him, love clearly had not. They might not have swapped many fluids yet, but Tony and Pepper’s connection had always been based on a meeting of minds and glorious clashing chutzpah rather than pure carnal attraction. 

And for a minute Pepper held her usual expression of exasperated tolerance, her default for when Tony had been up to something that needed her expertise to deal with. Then she caught sight of him. Exasperation faded into shock, and slid rapidly into contained fear and concern.

“Tony-. Oh my God.” Her hand rose to cover her mouth, to stop herself from gasping, and Tony went blue trying to figure out how badly she was going to react. He saw her in elegant wireframe, calculating heart rate, breathing rate, measuring pupil dilation, vasodilation of the blood vessels of her face, tabulated all of that together, and figured he was probably going to get a nigh full-on meltdown. Pepper was trying to hold back, trying to keep her breathing even, but when she looked into his eyes, her own widened so far he could see the whites all around. 

“Pep?” he asked, in as gentle a tone as he could muster.

Her entire body was heaving with attempts to control her breathing, control the sobs that were choking her throat, and she was rapidly losing the fight. Tony closed the gap between them, Pepper too stunned to move when he folded her into his arms. The light from the arc reactor traveled along the metallic pathways through his body, illuminating Pepper all over as Tony hugged her close, running one hand through her hair, tiny sparks leaping from his fingers to her skin. Every touch brought Pepper into sharper focus, the wireframe filling out to include the pathways of her nervous system, showing her brain activity.

She was so terrified that she was on the verge of shutting down.

“Shh, shh, it’s ok, it’s me. Pepper, it’s me, it’s all right…” Tony whispered in her ear. He could see where her fear response was working in overdrive, and touched her head gently, momentarily breaking the fear loop. He couldn’t let her damage herself, not over this, not over him. It wasn’t that bad, what had happened to him; she didn’t know what he could do, what he could see, she didn’t need to be afraid. He could explain if she wasn’t so afraid. Pepper was one of the few people who ever really understood him.

“What did you do?” she demanded in a strangled whisper, still stiff in his arms. “Tony, _what happened?!”_

“The arc reactor-,” he began, and she shoved out of his arms to look at him, her eyes darting all over his body.

“You’re dying _again?_ ”

Tony did not laugh, absolutely keep himself under control, because if he did laugh, Pepper would strangle him with her bare hands and no jury in the world would convict her.

“No,” he said. “I’m fine, I’m better than fine. I’m not dying, I swear.”

“Tony, you’re…” Pepper put her hand over her mouth again and swallowed. “You’ve changed. You’re…”

“I’ve never really been one hundred percent homegrown. Apparently I’m a late bloomer.” Tony tapped the center of his chest, above the most intense glow, and kept his voice casual. “Needed fertilizer.”

“Your eyes,” Pepper said, her voice muffled.

“Dad worked on the Tesseract, he got the arc reactor idea from his research. It changed him, and me too, and when I put the reactor in me-,” Tony tried to give her the Cliff Notes version before she could go into another fear cycle, but Pepper cut him off again.

“Your _eyes_ , Tony, have you looked at yourself?”

Tony flicked his vision over to a glass panel that JAVIS obligingly shifted to mirror mode. His eyes were luminous, crystal blue all over. Tesseract blue. Tony saw his own eyes widen when he saw what Pepper was getting at, what he hadn’t even realized. He looked like how Selvig had when he’d confronted him on the roof of Stark Tower. Scepter blue. Pepper had the footage; he’d shown it to her in case of a repeat Loki performance where he learned not to tap his voodoo stick on the arc reactor.

“I’m fine, I’m me,” Tony said, blinking away the blue and closing the gap again, putting his hands on Pepper’s shoulders. “It’s just how I’m changing.”

“Tony,” Pepper said, her voice strained, “changing into what?”

Tony went blue again and looked over at himself in the mirror, rendering his own systems in the wireframe to see. Metal and power threaded through his bones and tissues, congruent with his nerves and blood. The ridges on his head offered extra room for his brain, and that worthy organ was taking advantage of the space, convoluting up a storm behind the hollow spaces. And the ridges themselves… Tony extrapolated their speed of growth, the way they were positioned, and calculated that he’d no longer be able to go out in public without a hat in less than a month.

The prospect really didn’t bother him that much. What else had he wanted to do since his revelation in Afghanistan but use his mind to protect where he had once only destroyed? There could be no worthier test of his skill, his intelligence, his imagination, than trying to fight alongside the Avengers against whoever else was ready to test Earth’s mettle. No greater goal than using the greatest power source in the multiverse to bring new discoveries to light. Pepper knew that; they’d had a few Talks after the whole palladium incident, and she knew how much he cared about being Iron Man.

Perhaps she’d just never thought it might be so literal.

“I’m changing into what I have to,” Tony said, running a calming hand across her temple. “Pep, I knew the minute I woke up with a magnet in my chest that there was no going back. This is more of that, more of who I am now.”

“Tony…” Pepper trailed off and leaned forward to lay her head against his shoulder, then tilted her head up to kiss him. There were traces of salty moisture on her cheeks, and her lips were so, so soft. And then they were gone as Pepper pulled back. “Come out and have something to eat, all right? Steve’s back, and he wanted to tell you about his trip.”

“Sure,” Tony said, and pulled away from her to grab the pieces he’d been working on and put them in their boxes. “I’m gonna save my work and I’ll be right out, okay?”

Pepper nodded, her shoulders shaking, and Tony saw her fear levels climb again. He reached out almost instinctively, but Pepper was already out the door. Frustrated, feeling like he missed something, Tony leaned against the smart glass and breathed out slowly.

“If you would care to see the conversation in progress, sir, open pathway SS 1850.4 mark delta,” JARVIS spoke up.

Connections flared from Tony’s hands against the glass without much conscious effort, and suddenly Tony was seeing security footage from the corridor outside. Pepper and Steve were sitting together on a bench, and Pepper was in the middle of a heartfelt tirade, her face streaked with tears.

“…can’t see it, Steve!” Pepper was saying, shaking with tears as Steve held her hands. “I almost didn’t recognize him, and he couldn’t see it for himself. He said it’s how he’s meant to be.”

“Miss Potts, I don’t know Tony as well as you do, but Howard was always ahead of the curve.”

“There _isn’t a curve_ for what’s happening to him, Steve. He… he _glows_ , he’s lit up, he’s practically metallic…”

“But he knows you care for him, didn’t you tell me that? You know it, and he knows it. He’s still trying to be a good man, a better man, but he dropped everything he was doing when you came to see him, didn’t he?”

Tony smiled; at least Steve could see what was going on.

“I love him,” Pepper said, and slowly shook her head. “But he touched me, and I wasn’t afraid anymore.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Like he turned off a switch. Steve, I’ve seen him hurt, I’ve seen him sick, I’ve seen him try to destroy himself, I’ve seen the armor in shreds, and nothing scared me like seeing him like that. But he held me, and I _wasn’t afraid at all._ ”

Steve’s jaw dropped, and Tony broke the connection to avoid seeing Pepper’s frightened eyes and stood in the middle of the room, not touching anything.

“She will understand in time, sir,” JARVIS soothed. “Miss Potts has always been able to comprehend you.”

“I changed her,” Tony said, half in awe, half in horror. “I changed how she felt.”

“You did temporary modifications to her electrical system to avoid emotional damage. I was very impressed, sir. But we can experiment further in virtual systems before bringing the technique to trial again.”

“I’m not doing a ‘trial’ on Pepper,” Tony said flatly.

“Of course not, sir. Her stability has always had a soothing effect on you. To change her gratuitously would be detrimental.”

Tony breathed in and out slowly a dozen times, feeling the faint metallic threads of light working with his muscles as he calmed himself. He knew to the nanosecond the time it would take Pepper to pull herself together, and wouldn’t inflict himself on her until she was ready to face him. Until he was ready to face her… Tony looked up to see JARVIS had a fresh distraction on hand, a virtual model of the Iron Man helmet floating just in front of him.

“What that for, J?”

“Estimated changes in your headspace, sir. And the utilization thereof.”

Tony looked at the internal specs for the helmet, and ran his hand along the ridges on his head, lingering on the depressed aspects of the lower sides. There were retractable electronics at the peaks of the inner arrangement of the helmet, hair-fine connectors meant to carry a wealth of information. Hair-fine connectors that would fit in those little depressions, if they continued to deepen like he thought.

“Ports,” he said positively. “We’re looking at direct connection to Iron Man.”

“To me, sir. You and I will become fully integrated in the suit, able to communicate at the speed of thought. You will no longer need to voice commands or set up protocols that might not cover every instance.”

A shiver of pure creative glee went through Tony’s body, bringing a perceptible brightening of his metal-infused flesh as the reactor picked up on his emotions. He’d been thinking of a connection like that since he’d begun banging out the prototype out of scrap metal in a cave.

Connection.

“Pepper,” Tony said softly, and looked over his shoulder at the door, his creative frenzy momentarily put back on hold.

“She is ready to face you again, sir. But I would brace yourself for a similarly strong reaction from each of the other Avengers, when they return to the Tower.”

Tony blinked blue and rendered himself in wireframe, watching the burn and pulse of his own reactions dance across his cortex. He could see some of the same fear he’d seen in Pepper, but at one remove, dancing and floating above where it was deeply rooted in her. Nevertheless, some of it was still there, along with guilt, and regret. The building blocks of who he’d become, and also sometimes his greatest stumbling blocks. He’d worn them like badges underneath the slick veneer of his flashy lifestyle, but now the paint and glitter was gone. Steve and Natasha and Clint and Thor and Bruce knew the buttons to push, because they were like their own. 

Pepper knew too, because Pepper knew him better than anyone. She could cry for him, and he’d hesitate for her. And with what he knew could be coming, that could be fatal.

But maybe, if he practiced, if he tried, he wouldn’t have to. He would be able to feel the guilt, but not let it rule him. He’d taken away Pepper’s fear; he could certainly smooth his own path against the well-meaning misunderstanding of his friends.

“Very good, sir,” JARVIS said approvingly. 

Tony smiled, metallic threads glinting in the lines of his face, and left the workshop. No point in hiding who he was anymore.

Not that he’d ever tried.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While this story is not Phase 2 compliant, I do use elements of plot (primarily related to the Infinity Stones) from Thor 2, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. If you have not seen these films, this story does contain spoilers from each, so be warned.

Dinner was awkward. Intensely so. Pepper wouldn’t meet his eyes. Steve wouldn’t stop staring. Tony would have just concentrated on the food, on making snarky conversation, except neither of those things were happening right now. Pepper had told Steve how Tony looked, but that somehow hadn’t translated in Steve’s brain to the reality of his blue-eyed, silver-glowy glory.

Because Steve was, very quietly, very calmly, completely losing his shit.

“Tony?” he asked. And damn, it was fascinating to check out Steve’s metadata, rendering him in wireframe and tabulating all his bodily processes, watching how perfectly he worked on the inside as much as the outside. That man had nerve conductivity even JARVIS would envy. “Are you… all right? Can we, I, help?”

It was probably not helping that the whole food thing wasn’t going very well either. Tony wasn’t hungry. He was actually having trouble remembering the last time he’d eaten. He’d put a bite of take-out in his mouth, and then put the fork down. He could feel heat briefly running through his core, and could clearly remember Yinsen’s words. _“That could power your heart for fifty lifetimes.”_ The new and improved arc reactor could run more than his heart, and for far longer than that. Food was… sort of pointless.

 _Arc reactor energy, all parts of a balanced diet, because it_ is _your diet,_ Tony thought with amusement.

“Not sick, Cap. Never better,” Tony said, shoving the plate aside. Pepper was on the far side of the table, hand around her coffee mug in a quiet, normal-looking death grip.

“But it’s-.”

“Me, Steve, it’s _me_.” Tony reached out and touched him on the arm, crystal blue math highlighting and filling in the gaps in the wireframe, answering questions about the serum that Tony hadn’t even thought to ask yet. Steve’s brain was glowing, shimmering with the same fear that Pepper had shown, but outwardly, Steve was holding it together. Tony was so, so tempted to break the fear like he had with her, but resisted the impulse. He needed to know how people were going to handle it without his intervention.

Steve took a couple of deep breaths and managed to look Tony squarely in the eyes. In the blue, the fear loop was tightening dangerously, and Steve’s thoughts, his neurons, were firing at an accelerated rate.

“The arc reactor is taking you over,” Steve said. He was trying to shock Tony into some kind of action, shock him out of… what, mind control? 

Tony shook his head, smiling. “Nope. It's part of me, Captain Spangles. Dad started this before I was born, and things weren't going like I hadn't exactly planned for, but now that I'm seeing all the angles, I'm fairly cool with it. As Pepper knows in detail that she nearly took my head off for, I couldn't exactly put all this in my chest without something happening, and it's no longer poisoning my blood, so... win-win.”

That had definitely not been the answer Steve had been expecting, and not in the tone either. Probably Tony should go back and look at the rest of the recorded security feeds to see exactly what Pepper had told him that Steve's expectations were so different. Or maybe that was just a consequence of him being over a half-century out of date. He was probably expecting a Tony-droid, not Tony Stark 2.0.

Well, better than 2.0, really. More like 9000.0. Over nine thousand, really.

“You don’t look… like you,” Pepper said. There wasn't any accusation in that statement/question. More paraphrasing what Steve was clearly not able to articulate. Pepper was really good at that.

“Yeah I do. I look like Tony Stark and this is what Tony Stark looks like right now.”

“But...” Steve trailed off. “Are you sure?”

Tony looked over at Pepper, smiled, and then turned back to Steve. “Completely, Cap. I'm good.”

\------

He hadn't expected Steve to take things at full value. But he'd take a half-value. He'd gleefully take the rest of the Avengers not trying to stick him on the wrong side of a laboratory and probing him in a non-sexy way until they'd finally figured out there was no reversing his new now.

Bruce had respected that. He knew more about poor medical experimentation than anyone here but Steve, and all the late-night video chats to New Delhi that Tony had hacked between Banner and Rogers had born out that theory. No, Bruce wasn't going to come back to reassure Steve. Yes, he'd seen and talked to Tony. And did they really think any of them were going to get away scott-free from dealing with something like the Tesseract?

The last had shut Steve up. 

“You had to drop that bomb on him, Banner?” Tony had said, once Steve had hung up. Tony couldn't have possibly left his favorite nuclear physicist in the dark about his whole new lease on life, and had let Bruce in on the data once he realized Steve and Pepper were both going to have meltdowns if he didn't.

“What else could I do?” Bruce said, sounding resigned and even more weary than normal. He looked up at Tony's crystal blue eyes and slowly shook his head. “I know when cells have moved way beyond human baseline, and you're not even in the same gene pool anymore Tony. I'm not going to lie, and I know you're handling things about a million times better than Selvig.” He peered at Tony closely as he talked, self-consciously running his hand over his head where Tony's ever-increasing ridges were expanding on his skull.

“If you're expecting me to gasp and clutch my pearls about being other than baseline human, you're in for disappointment,” Tony said.

“Welcome to the club, Tony,” Bruce said. And then he blushed in something that looked like shame. “I just... Someone needs to be able to understand these damn things without going crazy. And insane as it sounds, if it's picked you, it could do a hell of a lot worse. If you go rogue, I'll be there to shut you down, though. I had to promise that.”

“I'll accept your backhanded compliment.”

“In the spirit it was given,” Bruce said, and clicked off with a rueful smile.

Of the other Avengers, Tony had only seriously been worried about Thor. Understandably, Asgard might be a little bit annoyed to discover their shiny blue power source had gone and made itself an avatar on Midgard.

“But why should we be?” Thor said. He had arrived the following month, following some large-scale altercation on Asgard, something big enough that Tony was, unexpectedly, small fry. “It is unexpected, but not unheard of. Certainly Midgard could do no better than to have you calculating what must be done if there is any further excursions by things like the Tesseract. You had a destiny, your fate was woven this way from your birth.” 

All of that had been an argument to stay, to use what the Tesseract had given him in Avenging Earth. He would have tried to make things up to Pepper, kept himself out of the public eye, break laws of physics in the Tower for fun and profit in between keeping the peace in a shiny new set of Iron Man armor.

Then Natasha and Clint had showed up to take advantage of his standing offer to house them. Natasha had greeted him with perfect casualness hiding a steel-spring tension he could see winding in her with every word of small talk. Clint had taken one good look at him, and had quietly excused himself, quietly went to the bathroom, and then quietly (according to JARVIS) thrown up the entire contents of his stomach and intestines after seeing Tony's blue eyes.

That necessitated a whole rethink of the situation.

\-------

“JARVIS, you’d say we’ve watched a lot of sci-fi stuff together, yes?”

“A rather disturbing amount at last count, sir.”

“Are you following my line of thought, J?”

“Somewhat, sir. Do elaborate.”

“Humanity.” Tony looked at himself in the mirror, silvery-blue circuits running across his flesh, integrated so tightly it was hard to see where one ended and the other began. “Do you think it’s worth it?”

“Do you, sir?”

“We’ve done a lot of shitty stuff.”

“You have suffered though several very dark instances of human nature, your own and others’, sir.”

“And I think we’ve done some damn awesome things.”

“Your own more recent actions amongst them, sir, as Iron Man. If you’re asking me if humanity should be discarded, I would disagree. If you had not been raised human, I would never have been created, and you likely would have never advanced yourself to this degree.”

JARVIS was right. And what was the point of being a futurist if you couldn’t see what was coming next? He had wary acceptance from Steve, fatalistic acceptance from Bruce, alien acceptance from Thor, and three very human people in Pepper, Natasha, and Clint who were having a lot of trouble jumping on the Tesseract-Tony train. Not that he entirely blamed them.

Tony turned towards the suit. The suit that would, he was sure, be about as one with himself as his skin in the very near future. The same future that held more things like the Tesseract coming towards the Earth. But he could see farther now, deeper and farther than what had broken like a wave over Manhattan. Farther than any other of the Avengers could reach. 

“Yeah, I know. But I don't think humanity is ready for me. And I don't mean that in a backhanded complimentary Nick Fury kind of way either. I mean I pretty much play distraction anyway, and I can do that just about anywhere. Thor said us playing around with big boy toys was a dinner bell that Earth was ready for a higher form of war. We need someone out there unringing that bell, and I know that's a scientifically impossible metaphor-.”

“But you are Tony Stark, sir, and impossible is your everyday.”

Tony just grinned. “That's my boy.”

–----------

Tony finished up loading the last of the new equipment in the latest iteration of Iron Man when he felt Pepper enter the lab behind him. JARVIS flicked up the security feeds behind his eyes, and he could see her walking across the lab slowly.

“Tony, what you doing?” Pepper's voice sounded calm, conversational, but Tony could hear the undertones that mean she was at her peak stress levels, and he had to exert himself to not cross the room and calm her, to give her the peace she needed, she _deserved_. He smiled instead, disarming as he could, turning to give her a view of the gleaming metal of the newest suit.

“Gotta go save the universe from danger. The usual. Bit father away than the other times, but we don't get to pick where duty calls, right?” he said. 

Pepper had that one expression on her face, the one that set off alarm bells. The one she had when she'd discovered he was throwing himself into deadly danger and she didn't think she could cope with having to worry about him getting shot along with every other part of his life.

“Tony, this is... I don't know what's you anymore.”

He closed the gap and held her tight, kissed her, and she was sapphires and starlight in his arms. He could try to make this better, for her. Somehow. He just... this was something he could do, that he _needed_ to do, that the others couldn't. Some way he could use what he was to do the right thing, but not need everyone to have to jump on his train.

“I know I'm pretty far afield of were I was six months ago. Someone's got to take care of this thing before anyone else gets the bright idea to go world-hopping and mind-bending. Pepper, when I say I was born for this, I mean it really, really literally.”

That startled a laugh out of her, and her stress levels reduced slightly on their own.

“You're beautiful,” he whispered, and he could see the pressure of tears building before he saw the moisture in her eyes. “A lot of things have changed, but I still love you. You're the best.”

The threatened tears trickled out, Pepper's face going blotchy as she tried to hold back. For his sake. For hers.

“You're going where I can't. I... I can't even watch you n TV and curse you for making me worry,” she said.

 _Don't go where I can't follow._ That was part of what had kept a distance between his parents, Tony knew now.

“I can take you...”

“Tony,” she warned, putting a hand on his chest.

“I'm not Dr. Manhattan, Pep. I'm still me, just a guy with... upgrades.”

She laughed out loud at that, tears still trickling out of her blue eyes. And she let him go.

–--------

Odin seemed impressed by Tony's audacity to seek an audience, if nothing else. Asking Thor to petition Heimdall had paid off, no matter how long it had taken.

However, that didn't preclude Odin smiting Tony halfway into next week if he offended the All-Father.

“To what do we owe this surprise visit, Anthony Howardson?”

On second thought, Tony was suddenly completely cool with offending the All-Father.

“I came for the Tesseract.”

The while eyebrows flew up. “Oh did you now?”

The cadence caught on something in Tony's mind, and he absently asked JARVIS to see if he could find anything that twigged in there.

“Yeah. Not trying to throw stones, because Earth did a bang-up job with our security, but the Tesseract is no more safe here than the Aether. Which isn't here. And is actually Knowhere at all. Or was.”

Odin lost his composure for a moment, naked shock on his face at that revelation. Inwardly Tony gave JARVIS a high five. Hacking SHIELD had been fun. Hacking Asgard's network had taken the better part of three months, and had totally been worth it. The challenge for both Tony and JARVIS had been a good one.

“Instead of putting all of your Infinity Stones with one Collector, how about you let me tend to the Tesseract. She'll be happier with me, and you won't have to worry,” Tony said.

“How are _you_ any more secure than its previous vaults?” Odin asked, his stern voice back in place.

“Moving target. Personal investment. Family ties. She'll stay with me the way she won't stay with anyone, and believe me when I tell you I will do anything to see her safe.” Tony moved a few steps closer to Odin, eyes shining blue, and saw the All-Father smile.

–------

The vaults of Asgard were secure enough, though Tony could think of a couple ways to get in without taxing his new and improved lobes too much. To most, the consequences of the theft weren't worth the trouble, because they didn't know who they were dealing with. Not like him.

The Tesseract glowed blue and happy in her case, and Tony could feel the resonance through his whole body. The arc reactor cavity shifted inside him, ready to receive her, and Tony opened himself up, his armor folding away around his heart.

“Hey, Big Mama,” he said warmly, scooping her up as she blithely opened her own case for him, and slid her inside himself. Heat bloomed through him as she slid home, and his world sharpened into shocking blue clarity, spaces between spaces opening up and revealing their secrets. “Thanks,” he murmured.

“The Tesseract is protected, sir,” JARVIS said. “She is content.”

She thrummed within him, the true source he'd been built from. It was a homecoming, a reunion.

It was a glorious mindfuck and Tony loved it.

“Lots of plans in here, J. Big moves. We're going to go a lot of places, pick up a lot of friends.” Another thrum of certainty. He could open the doorways not just between spaces, but between minds as well. “Loki, you selfish bastard,” he muttered. “You were using a supercar transformer to break through walls to the local corner shop. No wonder she didn't warn you.” She could have told him everything, including her weaknesses, but she'd saved that for herself, cutting him out of her true power. And he hadn't seen.

Tony turned back to look at Odin, certainty about his identity flashing across the blue of his vision. “Odin” was looking at him, staring into eyes that could bore to the center of the Asgardian's mind as easily as Tony could step between worlds. Loki's shocked, green-eyed gaze stared at him from behind's Odin's eyes. His grip on his spear tightened, and Tony could see a flare of magic building. 

“You planning on conquering any worlds or hurting any of my friends?” Tony asked casually, brushing invisible specs of dust from his gleaming chestplate.

Loki was so surprised he actually answered truthfully. “No, I have what I want.”

“And Odin?”

“Asleep.”

“Like he would have been anyway.”

Loki nodded warily, not relaxing his vigilance.

“Thor's doing good on Earth. You keep Asgard ticking along, gather your accolades, and I don't think anyone has anything to complain about.”

“I invaded your world!” Loki said, incredulous at Tony's calm.

“And you got caught, and the consequence of that was your mom died,” Tony said, not dropping his gaze.

Loki's eyes became clouded with pain.

“I've got no punishments to top what you did to yourself. And I have a better than perfect chance of knowing Thor would agree with me.”

“You can't know that.”

Tony's eyes and body blazed blue, and for a second Loki could see the potential power in the Tesseract that no one else, not the Chitauri, not him, not even Thanos had been aware of. Tony did know, and _know_ on such a level that all of Loki's learning was as if for naught.

“Yeah, I do know. Party on, 'Odin.'”

Loki stared at him with hollow-eyed regret, grounding the spear he'd been clutching. “Where are the rest of your brethren?”

“Where do you think I'm going?”

Loki nodded, fading into the blue of calculation as Tony cast his sight into the spaces of the universe, had JARVIS plot a course, and then pulled himself across light-years with a thought.

–-------

Pepper's phone chimed, a small blue light illuminating on one side. It hadn't been part of the original manufacture, but she couldn't worry much about that. Not after all this time. 

“Hey, Pep.” She turned the phone to see Tony on the screen, his face rendered entirely in blue and silver, ridges rising high above his forehead before trailing down his back, merging with the armor that was now a part of him. Her heart no longer clenched to see him like that, her world too strange to even long for the past. 

“Hey, Tony. Where are you?”

“Second star to the right and straight on 'till morning Or light morning. Out a fair piece, at any rate. I've got some great pictures for you.”

“Better than that blue nebula?”

“Even better,” Tony promised. Pepper looked around her room, her own private gallery of the places Tony had been lining the walls. Everyone else just assumed she was just expanding her interests into some unknown artist. She forebear to tell them she'd taken up an interest in space photography. 

“What have you been up to?” These were the questions she asked now, so similar to the ones she'd asked back when Tony had been... But things were different. The Avengers were different. It had been years since Tony had been home, but Pepper understood now.

“I found Erin. She's the one with the Aether. Don't tell Thor, but she's a dead ringer for Jane. Not her though. I think the Aether extrapolated DNA and personality and whipped up its own host because she was having a bear of a time finding someone who could use her and not burn or go crazy. I'll take a tiny hint of credit for that, thank you very much, but you can tell Thor you don't have to worry about the Aether popping up unexpectedly now,” Tony said. “JARVIS decided to go solo when we found Sunny, and I couldn't be prouder of him. You remember Loki's Glow Stick of Destiny? Somebody stuck Sunny inside, and I think JARVIS went and fell in love when we found her. He knocked together a decent body for himself-.”

“Very decent, knowing JARVIS.” There was another ping on her phone, and Pepper's eyes widened as she got a look at the vision that was JARVIS' new body. 

“Very fine as well,” Tony said, sounding amused, his silver-blue eyebrows giving a salacious bounce. “So Sunny's doing all right with J. Oh, and Violet is in a group marriage, apparently. Three aliens and some dude named Peter Quill, from Earth. You'd want to kick his ass; he's like me at thirty.”

“Should I be worried you two are going to take over the universe?” 

“Kid's got a sense of purpose, which is way more than I ever had, and he's got good friends. They've got Violet in a happy place.” 

Pepper breathed a little easier at that. For all she'd gone through, for all the Avengers had gone through, to know that the threats that had nearly brought New York, and the planet, to ruin were now under the guardianship of the dedicated, rather than the ruthless, was a huge weight off. That was what she'd traded for, when Tony had gone away. He'd gone on to... Bigger and better things wasn't quite right. Farther things. Things beyond what she knew or ever could know. Things beyond even geniuses like Bruce or Jane knew. Tony and the Tesseract. Tony Tesseract. 

Tony had always been on a different level than her. Now he was on a different level than anyone. And somehow... still the same. Enough, at least, for her to be able to handle seeing him. He was still reaching for the stars, though now he could touch them. He was still Avenging, just not on Earth. And he still loved her, in whatever cool, blue way he could. 

“And the others?” she asked.

“Still being a bit tricky, but with Erin, Violet, and Sunny on my side, I'm pretty sure we're on the right track.”

Pepper pressed her thumb to the side of Tony's electronic face, and felt her hair stand on end. Space yawned at the foot of her bed. And Tony was suddenly _there_ , from just across the universe like he was stepping across the room. He shimmered silver and cobalt blue, the suit and him and the Tesseract melded into a new whole, his profile, his whole head different now, able to contain a brain that could comprehend what forces he was dealing with.

“Hey, Pepper,” he said, smiling silver, eyes crystal blue.

She smiled back at him, brushing her hair back behind her ears, and blinked at him, the world going cerulean for a brief moment as she saw Tony glow with dense equations she'd just started to understand. If she was going to be scared, Pepper thought, that time had finally decided to pass.

“Hey, Tony,” she said. “Welcome home.”


End file.
